Effective software process improvement in a large-scale defence contracting environment. Most organisations struggle to consistently develop high-quality software on schedule and within budget. Continuing changes in technologies and customer expectations complicate this challenge. Software process improvement frameworks aim to guide organisations towards best practice. This project will assess practical experience with individual software process improvement frameworks in a large-scale defence c ....Effective software process improvement in a large-scale defence contracting environment. Most organisations struggle to consistently develop high-quality software on schedule and within budget. Continuing changes in technologies and customer expectations complicate this challenge. Software process improvement frameworks aim to guide organisations towards best practice. This project will assess practical experience with individual software process improvement frameworks in a large-scale defence contracting environment, with the goal of developing an effective strategy for integrating them. The outcomes will include documented experience with specific process improvement frameworks and a strategy for an overall framework that combines them.Read moreRead less
Reducing the risks associated with developing large-scale, critical software-integrated systems. Industry, government and defence increasingly rely on large-scale, critical software-integrated systems. The scale and complexity of these systems means current methods of analysing, designing and assuring their dependability are struggling to provide the constructive support and assurance that is demanded. Consequently, there are significant risks of cost and schedule overruns and of system problems ....Reducing the risks associated with developing large-scale, critical software-integrated systems. Industry, government and defence increasingly rely on large-scale, critical software-integrated systems. The scale and complexity of these systems means current methods of analysing, designing and assuring their dependability are struggling to provide the constructive support and assurance that is demanded. Consequently, there are significant risks of cost and schedule overruns and of system problems and failures. This project builds on results from our current collaboration - a new method for modelling, analysis and defect detection for the requirements of large-scale systems. We will develop and scale-up to industry strength, simpler, more powerful, strategies for analysing, designing and providing the high level of assurance required.Read moreRead less
Formal modelling and analysis of software requirements for air traffic management systems for improved integrity assurance. This project will significantly reduce the time and cost of developing software for critical applications such as aviation and air traffic management. As well as improving the trustworthiness of safety-critical computer-based systems, this project will also enable system improvements to be deployed faster and more reliably.
An Integrated Environment for Verification of Large-Scale Railway Interlockings. Railway administrations produce tabular specifications called Control Tables that define the safety and operational requirements for Railway Interlockings. This project will address the critical problem of early detection and elimination of errors in Control Tables. The project will produce a prototype environment for verifying railway interlocking Control Tables, suitable for application to most of the interlockin ....An Integrated Environment for Verification of Large-Scale Railway Interlockings. Railway administrations produce tabular specifications called Control Tables that define the safety and operational requirements for Railway Interlockings. This project will address the critical problem of early detection and elimination of errors in Control Tables. The project will produce a prototype environment for verifying railway interlocking Control Tables, suitable for application to most of the interlockings on the Queensland Rail network. It will also deliver results that will improve the current state-of-the-art in the practical application of model-checking technology.Read moreRead less
Model-driven development and verification of railway interlocking control logic. Railway interlockings are an essential and safety-critical part of all rail infrastructure. The results of the proposed project are intended to reduce the cost of the development and improve the quality of railway interlockings control logic. This will contribute to safer and more cost-effective rail transport in Queensland, Australia and internationally. This project has the potential to improve both development an ....Model-driven development and verification of railway interlocking control logic. Railway interlockings are an essential and safety-critical part of all rail infrastructure. The results of the proposed project are intended to reduce the cost of the development and improve the quality of railway interlockings control logic. This will contribute to safer and more cost-effective rail transport in Queensland, Australia and internationally. This project has the potential to improve both development and V&V capabilities for organisations that plan to use model-driven architecture (MDA) for safety-critical systems. While the industrial usage of MDA is currently in its infancy, forecasts predict that MDA will fundamentally change software development practice, especially in developed countries like Australia.Read moreRead less
Investigation of a Dynamic Collaborative Framework for Multi-Modal Devices. Modern business and society increasingly call for agility through the rapid formation of groups and collaboration of individuals. Mobile computing devices have the potential to enable this collaboration. However this is currently unrealised; software is not keeping up with hardware. This project aims to investigate techniques and software tools to provide an adaptive framework for multimedia-rich applications, which seam ....Investigation of a Dynamic Collaborative Framework for Multi-Modal Devices. Modern business and society increasingly call for agility through the rapid formation of groups and collaboration of individuals. Mobile computing devices have the potential to enable this collaboration. However this is currently unrealised; software is not keeping up with hardware. This project aims to investigate techniques and software tools to provide an adaptive framework for multimedia-rich applications, which seamlessly support collaboration through multi-modal communications between heterogenous mobile devices. This combination of multimedia, smart devices and advanced communications has the potential to revolutionise many key industries by making information available and manipulable in new and better ways.Read moreRead less
Visual Analytics for Next Generation Sequencing. Next-generation sequencing technologies have brought a revolution in biology and healthcare, while taxing the ability of scientists and clinicians to identify and process relevant data, to make sense of it all and communicate it to others in a concise and meaningful way. This project aims to tackle this problem through fundamentally new approaches to data selection and visualisation at very large scale, actively encoding for insight into underlyin ....Visual Analytics for Next Generation Sequencing. Next-generation sequencing technologies have brought a revolution in biology and healthcare, while taxing the ability of scientists and clinicians to identify and process relevant data, to make sense of it all and communicate it to others in a concise and meaningful way. This project aims to tackle this problem through fundamentally new approaches to data selection and visualisation at very large scale, actively encoding for insight into underlying biological and biomedical processes, bringing sustainable discovery of new relationships and variations within the data. The project aims to support new approaches to medical diagnosis and treatment, and offer crucial lessons to address the broader challenge of understanding large, complex data sets.Read moreRead less
Information Security Evaluation of Embedded Computer Software. Safeguarding classified electronic communications is of major national importance. This research, into security evaluation of computer software, is supported by the Defence Signals Directorate, which verifies the security of communications devices used by Australia's government and armed forces. As such devices become increasingly sophisticated, traditional security evaluation techniques have become unacceptably difficult and costl ....Information Security Evaluation of Embedded Computer Software. Safeguarding classified electronic communications is of major national importance. This research, into security evaluation of computer software, is supported by the Defence Signals Directorate, which verifies the security of communications devices used by Australia's government and armed forces. As such devices become increasingly sophisticated, traditional security evaluation techniques have become unacceptably difficult and costly. Hardware evaluation techniques, based on tracing paths through circuitry diagrams, have proven unsuitable for software evaluations. Consequently, devising new tools and techniques for information security evaluation of embedded computer software is essential for preserving Australia's national security.Read moreRead less
Software Quality Improvement Through Static Analysis and Annotation. Software forms the basis of critical infrastructure that supports industries such as electronic commerce. Flaws in the software can lead to failure of the overall system, or allow the security mechanisms of the software to be by-passed. This project is developing methods to improve the quality of software by finding common flaws that lead to security vulnerabilities or runtime failures. Within Australia, it is estimated that th ....Software Quality Improvement Through Static Analysis and Annotation. Software forms the basis of critical infrastructure that supports industries such as electronic commerce. Flaws in the software can lead to failure of the overall system, or allow the security mechanisms of the software to be by-passed. This project is developing methods to improve the quality of software by finding common flaws that lead to security vulnerabilities or runtime failures. Within Australia, it is estimated that there are approximately 75,000 software developers who make substantial use of C/C++ and who could benefit from the availability of better automatic static analysis tools to improve both the quality of the code they produce and their productivity.Read moreRead less
An extensible framework for analysis of Java language-based security conformance. Java is a programming language and platform running on 3 billion devices. While Java provides a sandbox-based security architecture within the Java Class Library to protect systems from untrusted code downloaded from Internet, it cannot defend against implementation bugs that occur in the Java Class Library. The goal of this project is to provide a formal model of the Java security architecture, which can be used b ....An extensible framework for analysis of Java language-based security conformance. Java is a programming language and platform running on 3 billion devices. While Java provides a sandbox-based security architecture within the Java Class Library to protect systems from untrusted code downloaded from Internet, it cannot defend against implementation bugs that occur in the Java Class Library. The goal of this project is to provide a formal model of the Java security architecture, which can be used by program analysers to identify faulty or insufficient security checks in the Java Class Library that may lead to the sandbox being bypassed.Read moreRead less